Tag: thow

With my first year of gardening under my belt, I was feeling good. I extended the season by growing sprouts in my kitchen, and by growing microgreens in my bedroom throughout the winter of 2014!

Radish sprout with root hairs!

Roots before top growth!

Regrew store-bought green onions!

Green onions totally regrew themselves!

Jackfruit trees, I germinated the seeds 6/1

Jackfruit trees growing happily!

Lentil sprouts.

My 4-tray sprouting system.

Growing microgreens in my bedroom!

One of my microgreen harvests!

Early in January 2015 we met with our architect who was designing the plans for our TINY HOUSE ON WHEELS! It had taken us a year from when we decided to “go tiny” to get to this meeting. I knew that 2015 was going to be the year of us making our tiny house dream a reality. Because of this, the garden wouldn’t be my #1 priority. But I couldn’t help but start seeds and trust that I would have someplace to plant them in a few months.. I started my seeds in my bedroom on 3/18/15.

3.28.15 Baby tomatoes

Bedroom seed starting area!

It’s nice to wake up to a view of plants!

5.8.15 Tomatoes

Our tiny house construction began on 4/16/15.

3.26.15 Our trailer arrived!! We we’re so excited!

SO HAPPY!!!!

Our awesome contractors looking at the blueprints!

All of this happened in one day!

A wreath was hung for good luck!

Bathroom/Kitchen area

Getting our hands dirty & helping with the trim!

Our stairs & kitchen.

We moved from our apartment in Chicago (goodbye patio container garden!) into our tiny house on 5/22/2015. I took my seedlings along with me, and several days after moving in, I planted my seedlings in my trusty 5-gallon buckets, and into the ground (scary territory for me!)

Goodbye apartment building!

Hello Tiny House!!!

Us in our tiny house!

Getting the garden started!

Planting little babies in the ground!

Richard helping me plant something or another!

Containers all planted out!

Sweet little baby plants!

Gotta take notes!

I also emptied my worm bin, getting 19 #’s of worm castings. There were HUNDREDS of worm eggs!

A view of the worm bin before I dumpted it.

I quickly realized there were a BUNCH of worm eggs in my bin, and it was going to take me awhile to process the castings.

Mounting up castings to make it easier to remove worms.

Red Wiggler Worm Cocoons!

Beautiful Red Wiggler Worms!

BLACK GOLD! Aka worm castings ❤

Our garden suffered many challenges over the season:
-My in-laws landscapers weed whacked the entire garden bed taking out all of my leafy greens.
-The garden bed flooded and remained underwater for several days at a time after any rain, killing the rest of the plants that hadn’t been weed whacked!

We did have a few victories though! We got a small harvest of tomatoes:

I was fascinated watching this tomato branch root out!

Tomato flower is happening!

It’s growing!!

Good looking cherry toms!

Ripening black cherry tomato

Amish Paste Tomato ripening!

Green Zebra Tomatoes!

Small, but awesome cherry tomato harvest!

Amish Paste Tomato harvest!

We also got a few other plants to produce:

A view of our container garden!

Lettuce variety #1

I absolutely love this lettuce! So pretty! Can’t remember the name of the variety! =(

Speckled Pea flower!

We got a few peas!

When your garden fails, eat the weeds!

A volunteer radish was our first successful radish!

Overall, 2015 was not our best year of gardening! I learned hard & fast about how important it is to have good draining soil, full sun, and landscapers who don’t kill all your veggies! I learned a lot over the year. I knew 2016 was going to be a way better gardening year… ‘Cuz we were moving ourselves & our tiny house to NORTH CAROLINA!